Chirac to try for top French post

Press, 22 January 1988, Page 20

Chirac to try for top French post

NZPA-Reuter, Paris THE PRIME Minister of France, Mr < Jacques Chirac, who announced at the week-end that he would run in France’s presidential election this spring, rose to the top of French politics on a series of daring gambles for power. The neo-Gaullist leader became Prime Minister for the second time in March, 1986, staking his career on using the position as a springboard for the presidency. Mr Chirac plunged into the unknown by serving under President Francois Mitterrand, a Socialist, in a Left-Right powersharing experiment known to the French as “cohabitation.” Critics decried a “marriage of convenience” and forecast the country would be paralysed by political squabbles in the two years to the presidential poll. But the arrangement lasted, despite bouts of strife, with both partners emulating a respectable couple avoiding rows within earshot of the neighbours. Mr Chirac’s problems came from other quarters. The 1987 stock market crash upset his plan of riding to the presidency on the crest of an economic upsurge; Misjudgments and grumblings in his multi-party coalition led to humiliating retreats on university reform, on revising France’s nationality code, and on restructuring carmaker Renault. “I have had a lesson in modesty,” Mr Chirac said, summing up 21 months in power in December, 1987. “It has shown that you cannot always do what you want.” Mr Chirac’s dashing style has won him fierce loyalty among supporters but enemies accuse him of opportunism and of stabbing allies in the back for the sake of personal ambition. “There is nothing exceptional about him — except his treachery,” was the bitter comment attributed to. the former President, Mr Valery Giscardd’Estaing, who blames Mr Chirac for his failure to win a second term in 1981. Mr Chirac pushed through an ambitious programme of economic liberalisation when his Centre-Right coalition defeated the Socialists in the General Election in 1986. '.He set about selling off 65 State-owned banks, insurance companies and industrial concerns, as well as a television channel, to private investors. But Mr Chirac stumbled in December, 1986, when students rebelled against a reform designed to raise university standards. He withdrew the bill, but in the new year France was parlysed by rail and dock strikes and Mr Chirac was forced to abandon social reforms and restore consultations with the unions. Then the stock-market crash forced a halt to the privatisations. Abroad, Mr Chirac was accused of giving in to blackmail over efforts to free 10 Frenchmen held hostage by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon. Acknowledging that Iran held the keys to free the hostages, Mr. Chirac began a process of “normalisation” with Teheran. Critics accused him of doing a deal involving the release of a suspected Iranian terrorist who hid for five ’ months in the Iranian Embassy in Paris, but he denied any such deal. Like many French politicians, Mr Chirac graduated from the Ecole Normale d’Administration, a school for top civil servants. Born on November 29, 1932, the son of a businessman with family roots in rural Cbrreze and Paris, Mr Chirac flirted with the Communist Party in his teens. His real entry into politics was as a protege of General de Gaulle’s successor, President Georges Pompidou, who dubbed him "my bulldozer” for getting things done. After winning his first ministerial post at 34, he made his name as a vigorous Minister of Agriculture in 197274. He became Interior Minister in 1974, shortly before Pompidou died. Mr Chirac became Prime Minister under Mr Giscard but resigned amid acrimony in 1976. He took control of the near moribund Gaullist movement, name it the R.P.R. (Rally for the Republic) and spent five years fighting Mr Giscard. In 1977 he beat Mr Giscard’s candidate for the new post of Mayor of Paris and won what proved to be a powerful political base. In 1981 he stood in the first round of the presidential election but refused to transfer his support to Mr Giscard for the second round. As a consequence, Mr Mitterrand, the socialist candidate, won. Mr Chirac has revamped much traditional Gaullist doctrine in the R.P.R. In place of the isolationism which infuriated allies in the 19605, France is heading for greater defence co-operation with West Germany and Britain. In economic policy, the R.P.R. has moved towards a more freemarket approach influenced by Mrs Thatcher, in Britain. On television, Mr Chirac easily becomes impatient and aggressive under questioning, but associates say that behind that exterior lies a sensitive and kind man whose interests include Chinese art, French poetry, and antiques. Mr Chirac and his wife Bernardette, a French aristocrat, married in 1956. They have two adult daughters.